


Colours

by murphysarc



Category: House of Night - P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast
Genre: Angst, Backstory, F/M, M/M, Multi, Self Harm, self injury, so angsty, tiny bit of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 11:43:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murphysarc/pseuds/murphysarc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shaylin knows the world has colours, but she just can't see them, and that hurts more than anything else.</p><p>Or, the one where we find out just how challenging Shaylin Ruede's life really was before coming to the House of Night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Colours

**Disclaimer: I do** _**not** _ **own the HON series…I'm not that genius.**

_Ugly._

That's the one word Shaylin would use to describe them. Holding her Mother's hand, they're walking through the market. The colours around the place are sparkling. There's so much choice, so much  _wonder_ , Shaylin can't stay still.

She loves colour.

Her Mother scolds her, trying to keep her calm, but then Shaylin breaks away, trying to see the colours. Vibrant, dark, beautiful, bright, calm. All shades, all types, all kinds. It's magic. It's her world. It's what she's always wanted.

Then she sees them.

A man is pushing a cart quickly through the market, trying to get by everyone. Shaylin moves aside quickly, staring at what he's got. They look like fish, like the kinds she's seen on the television, but they don't look like regular fish.

They don't swim like they should. Their eyes don't hold pretty colours – instead, they look… _dead._  Shaylin doesn't really know what that word means, but when she'd asked her Mother, she'd said it "was a bad thing." Those colours looked bad. Were they dead?

The fish pass her and she can't see their eyes anymore. She doesn't mind. But she does know she'll never forget those colours.

It was the first time she saw a colour that she didn't like.

She's six now.

Months pass and she doesn't forget the eyes. She pushes them away, out of her thoughts, but she didn't forget, just like she knew she wouldn't.

The kids at school tease her constantly. They tell her she's different. They push her and they shove her around. They tell her mean things. She doesn't understand why she's bullied like this, only that nobody likes her.

Nobody likes her but the colours. Colours are her only friend. She tries to imagine what life would be like without them and she finds she can't. Life may be simpler without the colours, but not as exciting.

So she doesn't mind the bullying. She doesn't mind her abusive mother. She also doesn't know what "abusive" means, but her Mother said she was one. Shaylin gets hit a lot. She's never known anything else. Doesn't everyone's Mother do that?

She has no friends to tell her otherwise.

She's seven now.

The bullying has only grown worse. She understands what they're saying. She understands that the scars and bruises she has on her body shouldn't be coming from her Mother. She knows the breaks and tears in her mind shouldn't be coming from seven-year-olds. She knows this and she can't stop it.

She buries herself in the colours around her, trying to hide herself from the harsh world that seems to leap at her, trying to destroy her. She still doesn't know why she's the one who gets tormented like this. What did she do wrong?

She reads a lot now, too. The characters in her stories are a lot more enjoyable than the ones in real life. She can connect to those people. She can relate to them. She can visualize the colours in her head.

She doesn't realize it herself, but her teachers see the most gifted student they've ever taught when she's there. She's destined for greatness…that is, if she can survive through her life. She's intelligent, kind, and beneath the walls she's put up there's a very brave soul.

They try to talk to her, try to get her to take enrichment, try to encourage her to try harder, but she knows if she says yes, the kids will pick on her more. She doesn't want that. She doesn't know if she can stand it. So she says no, every time, to the point where her teachers just stop trying.

They completely ignore her. She has no peers to turn to.

A little while later she gets glasses. Her eyesight began to grow fuzzy, and though she doesn't understand what square things on her face can do to help, they do help. She can read again. The glasses just set on a whole new sore point of teasing. They let the colours through, but not enough to help.

It gets so bad she wants to tear the glasses right off her face. She wants to crush them, but then her Mother will hit her again, and she can't have that. She doesn't want to show up to school with a black eye. The kids will tease her about that.

She builds more barriers around her mind. She never goes out, at all, except for school. She never wants to go there. Nobody has heard her speak in a long time. She secludes herself, trying to hide from the world. She cries out in pain but nobody hears. She's only seven. Can't anybody understand?

Nobody does.

So instead, she builds her walls up higher, letting only the colours through.

She's eight now.

The bullying gets worse. She hides herself. Nobody knows her name. She doesn't know herself, what she's capable of. Great things can come of her, but she doesn't realize it yet.

She goes to bed one morning, savouring the colours as she always does before she goes to sleep. When she takes her glasses off, the horrible things they are, her eyesight is so bad she can't see the colours anymore. They blend together, reminding her of the dead fish eyes.

She hasn't forgotten. She feels dead sometimes.

As she tenderly rubs her split lip her Mother gave her, sleep takes her and she says goodbye to the colours.

The colours said goodbye too.

For, when she woke that morning, she couldn't see anything.

It's just dark. There are no colours. No vibrant greens, no sparkling blues, no calm violets, no striking reds. It's all black, like night descended on her eyes and stayed there.

She wails when she realizes the truth. She's blind.

She'll never read again. She'll never see again. What did she do wrong? Was she being punished? For what? Existing?

She tells her Mother and she gets hit for it, like it's her fault. It's not Shaylin's fault. Is it? Did she do something wrong? She can't help but think that she is.

When she finally goes back to school, they give her special equipment to help her learning. Afterwards, they forget she's even there. The kids laugh at her. It's a new game to sneak up on Shaylin and scare her or push her.

One day a boy pushes her down a hill. She falls hard, twisting her ankle when she lands. The teachers tell her to watch her balance.

She cries herself to sleep everynight. She can't make up the loss of the colours the one thing keeping her grounded. And so, she doesn't stay grounded.

She floats away, trying not to break apart, but inside, she's already broken.

The day she breaks her glasses opens a whole new world. She doesn't need them anymore, obviously, yet they still sit on her nightstand. She accidentally brushes them one night, before she's about to go to sleep, yet she always feels as if she's asleep now.

They fall on the ground and hit her foot. In that moment, she feels all the pain that's been inflicted on her come back. All the anger she's kept hidden. Everything. And she steps on the glasses, smashing them to bits.

She feels the glass cut her foot again and again, the frame crumple beneath her. It  _hurts_ , but the pain is good. It's a good pain. It's the kind of pain that helps you, that lets you feel when you don't think you can anymore.

_MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!_

She falls to the floor, sobbing.

She's thirteen now.

She's cut herself more and more. She can't count how much blood she's lost from those cuts. Several times she's passed out but it still feels good.

And everytime she cuts she knows she shouldn't, but she can't stop. In school, they always tell you how addictive drugs can be, and stay away from them. They don't tell you how addicting self-harm can be.

She's so, so alone.

She just wants a friend. She just wants somebody she can relate to. She  _needs_  somebody to relate to.

Or else she fear she'll give up. This time, for real.

The walls she built so long ago are closing in on her, suffocating her, choking her.

She can't tear them down anymore.

She's seventeen now.

She's forgotten the colours.

But she hasn't forgotten the fish eyes.

Her Mother still abuses her. She's still bullied. She's stopped cutting, simple because she can't see the cuts. Her waist is probably a mess. She's probably cut on top of old cuts.

She's a mess, though she's better at hiding it now. Nine years of blindness and she's finally used to it.

She's walking down the street, trying to take a walk to clear her thoughts. Nobody's around, and that's how she likes it. She understands these things now, but she doesn't believe in miracles.

She needs a miracle.

Shouldn't one have happened by now?

She hears somebody running and she stops briefly as the footsteps stop in front of her. He seems to stammer, not sure of what he's saying, but he's talking to her.

He's probably making fun of her. They all do. They don't even know her.

He touches her forehead and white hot pain races through her skull. Before she knows anything, she's on the ground, shielding her eyes from the violent onslaught of colour and shine.

Shielding her eyes?

She can see. She can see!  _She can see!_

A boy's looking down at her, about her age. He's incredibly handsome, and by the tattoo on his forehead, he's a Tracker.

She's been Marked.

She can see.

A very cute boy was standing over her.

Hope comes back to her now, hope that maybe everything won't be so bad anymore.

She's found her miracle.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

She stands in front of the mirror, looking at herself for the first time since she's been given her sight back. She doesn't like to look at the mess she'd made of her body those years ago. Her glossy, dark hair falls naturally around her shoulders and her body is a good one…to someone else.

Nobody but her should know what she had done. Too much harm had come to her body by her own hands. With her sight restored, every time she saw anything sharp she shuddered inside. She hadn't looked at her waist. Her waist was where it had all happened.

She slowly moves her hand from the wall, where she had been supporting herself, to the bottom edge of her shirt. She always wore long ones in case it rode up in the wind or anything. Nobody could see…

She lifts up her shirt, looking at the scars for the first time. She gasps in horror when she sees what she had done to herself. Long, jagged scars cross other scars. Most are still bright red. The image of the dead fish eyes from the market comes back to her now as she thinks the word she thought then –  _ugly._

"Shaylin?" The voice comes, strong and sturdy, but she doesn't hear it. She's in the depot tunnels, but she doesn't know who is outside her room. She doesn't have a roommate. Who would want to room with her? Even if she has more self-esteem now, the words and taunts the bullies gave her will never truly leave. Just like the scars, except these ones are uglier because you can't see them.

"Yeah?" she calls back because she doesn't know what else to do. She's crying now, but she hides her tears. She did it all the time with her mother. Crying only got her hit. She can't seem to drop her shirt, can't seem to let it all go…

"Are you okay? You've been in there a while." Shaylin recognizes the voice to be Zoey's.

"I'm fine."

"I told you  _it_  was fine." That was Aphrodite's voice. Shaylin tried not to hate her but she couldn't help it. She wanted to be nice. That was all Shaylin ever wanted. But nobody seemed to realize that that was all. "Can't we leave  _it_ to  _its_ strange ways now? I haven't drunk my breakfast yet. Don't let  _it_ take that away from me, that's what I look forwards to. I didn't picture myself worrying about  _it_."

"Don't call Shaylin 'it'." That was Stevie Rae. The way Aphrodite was treating Shaylin brought back all the words all the bullies had ever said. Aphrodite was just another one of the bullies…just another one…but her words made Shaylin realize that she'd never truly get away from them. The bullies would always chase her, always follow her, always tell her she wasn't good enough.

She still believed them. She'd never be good enough. How could she? Not everyone in the whole world could lie. She didn't deserve to be here…

"Shaylin?" Zoey calls again.

"I'm fine," she gets out, but the tears begin to flow faster after that.

Nobody answers. Finally, Zoey replies, "Okay." Shaylin can hear them leave. She looks at her few, meager possessions. Finally, deciding on what she hopes is the right move, she takes a razor that she's secretly kept and brings it to her skin…but this time she goes to her wrist. Her waist is ugly enough. Her whole body should be ugly. She doesn't deserve it. Not good enough…she's not good enough…

She's never going to be good enough, is she?

She brings the razor across her skin and she feels that same feeling of release she used to as it begins to bleed. The blood drips onto the floor, and Shaylin cuts her other wrist, sighing in the good feeling. The pain makes her know that she's capable of doing something correctly.

She puts down the razor and watches for a while as her blood trickles to the floor. Finally she looks back up into the mirror and gives a cry when she realizes just what she's done.

She can't handle it. As all the words the bullies have ever said come flying through her mind –  _skank, whore, fag, cunt…and finally, Aphrodite's 'it'_  – she lifts her fist and smashes the mirror.

The glass falls everywhere and she sinks to her knees, the blood falling over her shirt and her jeans. She's crying so much she can't stop. A few seconds later, she hears people running to her room. She's going to be found out. She's going to be found out…

Zoey lifts the curtain in the doorway and runs through, gasping as she assesses the situation. Stevie Rae is here too, along with Damien and even Aphrodite. Aphrodite doesn't rush over, or act concerned. She just stares at Shaylin and Shaylin knows she knows the cuts are because of people like her.

Zoey joins Shaylin on the floor and wraps her arms around the smaller girl. "Why did you do this?" Shaylin gives a start as Zoey doesn't sound angry, or upset. She only sounds empathetic.

Shaylin can't respond for a while because her tears are too thick. When she can stop crying and speak, everyone stops what they were doing and they listen. She tells them how she went blind, the teasing, the bullying and the cutting. Shaylin leaves out the Aphrodite part, but Aphrodite infers for herself what happened.

"It's because of what I said, isn't it?" Aphrodite whispers. "I made you…"

Shaylin tries to shake her head. "No, no…I was stupid."

Aphrodite refuses to accept that. "No, it was me."

Zoey asks to see her scars, and Shaylin doesn't have a reason to stop her, so Zoey gingerly lifts up Shaylin's shirt and then drops it immediately as she sees what the younger girl had done to herself.

"You're okay now," Zoey whispers. She hasn't stopped hugging Shaylin. "You're okay now."

She invokes spirit, helping to calm Shaylin, Damien calling air, and Stevie Rae calls on earth. "You belong here. Nyx has gifted you…you're one of us."

Shaylin didn't realize how much those words meant to her until later. She feels the calming effects of the elements on her mind and she falls to sleep.

When she wakes she's alone again. But only physically.

"I'm not alone," she whispers to herself. She gets dressed, telling herself that again and again. "I'm not alone. Never alone. Never again."

During that day at school, she sees Erik Night once. He clearly wants to make a move on her, but underneath, Shaylin wants to believe he's a good person.

She remembered how she thought he was "her miracle."

Maybe she can still find that miracle, somewhere.


End file.
